Reflecting on Pinnacles

[kenfowkes]

Open to all areas of critique.  One word critiques are OK and appreciated as well.  If you don't know what that means, see Sixten's "One Word Challenge" post.

[Lady GooGoo La La]

Lovely shot Ken, wonderful composition, sharpness, and beautiful place.

Again this is one of those shots that appears much better when viewed large. 

While the colours are probably correct, i would prefer to see more contrast on the slope on the right. This location looks very dry and vegetation in dry areas often has pale blue green colour so I suspect colour correct, but more contrast would make a more pleasing photo to me, and possibly more saturation on red rocks on the left. 

While overall excellent I think the shot lacks the drama, that could be achieved with a little more colour contrast.  Maybe if the shot had been shot a bit earlier in the morning it MAY have had more drama.

I would be very pleased with such a shot, great work

kind regards Lady GooGoo LaLa

[olsmar2]

What bothers me is the large rock in the foreground. He divided the lake into two parts and the beautiful reflection in the water is destroyed.
The rock connects with the background, I can not see immediately what is foreground and what is part of the background.
To me is the image a bit too blue, but maybe that's because of my monitor.

[Sixten Imgs]

+ Place, details.

+ Composition.

+ Reflections.

+ – Sharpness. Basically very ok, but on the other hand there is slightly something I call "the overdriven, grainy HDR", especially seen in the large version. I'd like to see here the same silky, smooth sharpness there was in your fantastic Prague and Bratislava scenes. Naturally the light is another and the rocks may be more grainy than the old city walls...

+– The rock ( lets call her "The Lady of the Lake", unless she has not just gone swimming... :) . This statue-like rock brings something special to the scene (as you just might have heard...:) and the composition of it seem very intentional. On the other hand without the rock the reflection really would seem even more amazing, almost like a gate we can look through. 

– Overall tone. It could be slightly warmer in my opinion too. Possibly now there is something I call the "HDR coldness". 

Please, still do not remove the rock... This is a great shot and fantastic place like this!

[™Ken Kruse™]

It's a great image that I would be proud to call my own. Comments below are minor quibbles at most, more like simple observations. 

I like the composition, especially the way the reflecting rocks echo the shape of the foreground. Optimally the bird shaped rock in the foreground would have a little more sky above it but doing so would sacrifice the careful thought put into fitting that jigsaw puzzle so cleverly. Using a slightly longer focal length and stepping back a bit might have accomplished it but I can't be sure of it. 

The colors are nice but for some reason the sky just isn't completely fitting the rest of the image. The brightness of the sky suggests to me that there should be a bit more contrast on the rocks. It's very, very close but just a tiny touch off (IMO).

The reflection in the water tells me that the water was glassy smooth but when I look at the edges around the rock formations I notice what makes it appear like a disturbed water surface. This may be a natural condition but I can't help but wonder if you bumped up the "clarity" of the lake to enhance the reflection. If so, I really can't say which works better without seeing it both ways.

[kenfowkes]

Thanks to all of you for the excellent feedback.  This is a relatively recent photo that I think reflects my current "state of the art" in photography.  I like it, but it did not have the visual impact I hoped it would have when I took it, even though I gave it a good effort.  This is an HDR stitch of 6 shots, each with three exposures separated by 2 stops.  It was taken in the morning, after sunrise, but before the sun had risen high enough to shed light on this scene.  The camera is facing more or less into the sunrise, so the scene is effectively back-lit.

The Rock (aka Lady of the Lake)
She is why I took this picture.  olsmar2, you mentioned the thing that bothers me most.  I very much wanted her to be surrounded by reflecting sky with good margins top and sides.  I had my tripod extended to its full height, with the legs separated by less than half a meter, at the very top of a boulder that was almost, but not quite in the right position.  That said, it doesn't bother me as much as I thought it would.  I took a similar picture without the Lady, and I can't decide which I like better.

Contrast
I agree with both of you Lady GooGoo La La and Sixten.  I spent a fair amount of time tweaking the contrast and it always seemed like too much and too little at the same time.  It seemed that as I increased contrast things started to look overblown before they started to look interesting.  I'm wondering if it has something to do with the fact that much of the terrain is highly textured at small scales, but rather uniform at larger scales.  I think we like to see contrast at the scale of recognizable objects, and here much of the contrast is at a finer scale.  When the contrast is boosted enough to make bush/boulder sized objects stand out distinctly, the fine texture, especially in the rocks, becomes overblown.  If anyone cares to comment on this thought, I'd be very interested.  Likewise if anyone has a suggestion of something to try.

Color
I'm terrible with color and it seems I need frequent reminding.  I just now used the grey of the cloud in the center to adjust the white balance and if that cloud really was grey then olsmar2 and Sixten you are right, the image is too blue.  Is adjusting white balance based on grey clouds a sensible thing to do?   It definitely looks much better to me warmed up, and Ken, the rocks and the sky seem more harmonious as well.  I did adjust the color of the reflections quite a bit toward blue because the water was distinctly yellow-brown and I wanted the reflecting colors to better match their real counterparts.

Reflections
In addition to shifting the color of the reflections, I also bumped up the contrast and brightness.  To me the result borders on artificial, but not disturbingly so.  Ideally, it would go unnoticed, so the fact that you noticed, Ken, is good to know.  The water was glassy smooth in some places, slightly rippled in others, but it was not clear water.

Thanks again, everybody!  I think you all hit on important issues.  And if anybody has ideas about how to optimize contrast in an image like this, I'm all eyes.

Warm regards,
- Ken F

[Lady GooGoo La La]

Ken this photo looks like one in a coffee-table book, and could be, to me the only quibble is the lighting/colour everything else is great!..... like you I struggle with this too. When tweaking my own I'm never happy and often like my own less after I see them on Panoramio. especially with respect to colour....   I know they change after I post them.....  got to be!  So annoying after post what I think looks good, only later I want to delete it.  This photo NOT in that catagory tho, I would be interested to see if you could maybe post a different version I think its got huge potential.

regards  Lady GooGoo LaLa

 

[kenfowkes]

Thanks for the extra encouragement Lady GooGoo La La!  Here is a new version with adjustments motivated by the feedback here.  The contrast and brightness have been increased through most of the non-sky, and especially in the hill on the right and prominent rock features left of center.  The temperature was increased five points and tint adjusted slightly toward green. 

If anyone cares to comment on the new version, please feel free to do so.  I do like seeing the features of the landscape better, but is it overbearing?  Did I perhaps go too far?  Not far enough?

[™Ken Kruse™]

Personally I like the new version better. I do think the photo takes on the appearance that it was taken a little later than it was but think it has more continuity and "pop"!

As for going too far or not enough, I suppose that depends on the kind of "feel" you want the photo to have. Now that you have the continuity you could easily try some global changes to see which you like best. When all is said and done I suppose it comes down to whether you're aiming for reality or a romanticized version of reality. If you opt for the romanticized version it's important to be believable, therefore continuity is the main importance.  

In response to your question about clouds and WB, I will often set white balance by sampling clouds initially and then fine tuning based on memory and preference. In my experience cloud color varies dramatically depending on atmospheric conditions.  The other day I was out looking at the clouds and quietly remarking to myself how blue they were, an hour or two later they appeared quite warm as the sun was lower in the horizon. Based on the time of day you took this I would expect the clouds to be slightly warmer but that's highly generalizing.  

[kenfowkes]

Thanks for your thoughts Ken.  I think I understand what you mean by continuity - that as one scans the photo one isn't disturbed by changes in the quality of an attribute like light, color, or clarity.  Your point is well taken and useful to me because I really do enjoy making composite photographs, and I often treat photos as separated into areas (like sky, water, land) and I adjust those areas separately to bring out a specific quality (like cloud, reflection, colors).  A lot of what I do brings a risk of disturbing continuity, so I like the idea of adding a 'continuity check' step.

What I'm usually aiming for with nature photographs is a romanticized version of reality that approximates the feeling I got when I was there, hopefully in another person viewing the photo.  The romanticized exaggerations are my attempt to compensate for all that is lost when recording a scene in a digital sensor.  The "other person" thing is tricky though, and I'm trying to get a better sense of this.  I think this forum is an excellent teacher.

[Sixten Imgs]

I think the changes you made were good, Ken. IMO the feeling of depth is even better in this version, for example when you look at the background and then the tree plus the other things on the right.

In order to see the process and the changes that have been achieved it could be quite interesting and educative to see one single shot from which you started to build this photo.

Just an idea ( for some very rainy day... :)

[kenfowkes]

I agree with you Sixten about the higher contrast giving a better feeling of depth, especially with the slope on the right.  The feedback there was right on target.  (Good aim, Lady La La!)   Thanks for sharing your opinion on the newer version!  Interesting idea to upload a single shot.  Can't manage it from where I am now, but will consider doing that at a future date.

[Lady GooGoo La La]

Thank you Ken!, I too like the new version better. Good job!

Lady GooGoo LaLa

[jpobursky]

Nice shot. Good composition with the right amount of sky. I've been meaning to visit this area, so this has inspired me to do so sooner rather than later...